Wyoming saw more than 1,600 wildfires in 2025, a higher than average count that burned almost 250,000 acres, according to the Office of State Lands and Investments.
Notable blazes included the Dollar Lake Fire near Pinedale and the Red Canyon Fire outside Thermopolis, both from August.
This year’s figures put 2025 well above the 10-year average, said Jerod DeLay, the State Forestry Division’s fire management officer. But it’s still below the record-setting heights of 2024, which saw more than 2,000 fires burning 850,000 acres throughout Wyoming.
Between the 2024 and 2025 fire seasons, the Wyoming Legislature gave the state’s wildland firefighters additional funding with Senate File 152. The State Forestry Division used that to purchase an additional helicopter and two more single-engine airtankers.
“And they both were used quite extensively last year in 2025,” DeLay said. “I hope it made an impact on being able to jump on some fires, and we were able to keep some fires relatively small because we had more aviation to spread around.”
Stacia Berry, director for the Office of State Lands and Investments, highlighted this increased capacity during a hearing of the Joint Appropriations Committee earlier this month.
“The aviation program had a very successful season in this fire year, responding to 76 initial attack missions, providing a record number of bucket drops and supporting 14 different counties,” she said. “The success that the forestry and fire division has really seen this year is due to increased aerial support.”
Berry, and other leaders from the Office of State Lands, were in Cheyenne to defend their request for the upcoming biennium budget.
All in, the office is requesting about $225 million for the next two years. Of that request, about $16 million would support the office’s Fire Division, while an additional $20 million would be put into the Emergency Fire Suppression Account.
Local fire districts, meanwhile, are feeling the heat from property tax relief, which has aided individual homeowners while cutting the revenue many local government services rely on.
The number of wildfires and the acreage they burn varies year to year. DeLay said, in a typical year, Wyoming might expect to see about 1,000 fires toasting a little more than 200,000 acres. But that typical year was calculated by averaging the last 10 years, and the last 10 years includes 2024, which saw 850,000 acres burned.
“That average went up quite a bit last year,” DeLay said. “Last year was a record year, so that average obviously reflects that.”
Global climate change has made wildfires more frequent by stretching out the fire season — including in Wyoming, where high temperatures and low humidity make for ideal fire weather. Research shows wildfires are also growing bigger and more intense.
DeLay said it’s too early to predict what the 2026 fire season will bring.
“We’re going into this winter probably a little dry, just because November was fairly dry,” he said, adding that snowpack levels this winter will influence the fire season. “We kind of have to see what the spring really holds to really have a good idea what we’re looking at.”
